"First Squad. The Truth" by Anna Starobinets, summary

Anna Starobinets’s 2010 novel is a work of fiction written as part of the media project for the joint Russian-Japanese anime "First Squad" (2009, directed by Yoshiharu Ashino). The book doesn’t retell the cartoon, but rather develops a standalone story around it: the anime becomes a coded message received by a seventeen-year-old girl with paranormal abilities. Written in the genre of a mystical thriller, the book weaves together Soviet history, the occult, and personal drama into a cohesive narrative.

The Nadezhda boarding school and its six pupils

Nika is a seventeen-year-old orphan from near Murmansk, living in the closed boarding school "Nadezhda" in Sevastopol. The director of the boarding school, Mikhail Evgenievich Podbelsky, selected twelve children from across the former USSR — supposedly the most unfortunate — but only a few of each selection were of genuine interest to him. Nika senses lies physically: every deception causes pain in her solar plexus. This gift makes her an invaluable detector of sincerity and, at the same time, a source of constant suffering, because Podbelsky almost never tells the truth.

Six "dolls" remain in the boarding school: Nika, Lena the Gypsy, Red, Clown, Fat, and Mute. They receive regular intravenous injections of "vitamins," after which they are placed in glass "daytime nap" booths, wrapped in wires, and given metal headbands. In their dreams, they see fragments of the same scene: ice, fire, the moon, a circle. Nika sees all the fragments at once — a huge, purulent-yellow moon, opaque ice, a black, empty circle on the ice, and a shadow, followed by blood. Podbelsky waits for his "dolls" to transform into "butterflies" and "cross the line" — but none of the six ever fully do so.

Amigo and the sensory deprivation chamber

In parallel with her life at the boarding school, Nika practices dolphin-assisted therapy at the Sevastopol dolphinarium. She shares a special bond with a bottlenose dolphin named Amigo: in a sensory deprivation chamber (SDC) — a tank of warm salt water where a person loses all sense of body sensation — Nika immerses herself in Amigo’s space and communicates with him telepathically. Amigo cannot lie — his language is based on bodily signals, where each object and event is identified by its own unique word. He communicates his concern to Nika: his previous trainer has disappeared, and his new one is making him jump through a flaming hoop and uttering strange German commands — "Spring," "Fang," "Schnell."

Cartoon as a message

At a screening in the boarding school’s cinema, the students watch a pirated copy of the anime "First Squad" — a film about Soviet pioneers with psychic abilities who are executed on the first day of the war by SS officers from the Ahnenerbe using Baron von Wolff’s sacred sword. A surviving pioneer, Nadya Ruslanova, travels to the underworld to call her comrades to the decisive battle. During the screening, each student sees a fragment of a familiar nightmare — fire, ice, blood, the moon. Nika sees everything together and realizes that the scene from her dreams has been edited into the cartoon.

Podbelsky is convinced that anime is a coded message from the Other Side: from an enemy or an ally. He summons Nika for questioning, demands to know what she saw, and for the first time, dares to speak with her almost honestly. He admits that during Soviet times, he served in a special department dedicated to paranormal operations — the department existed under various numbers, sometimes referred to as the Sixth. After the collapse of the USSR, the department self-destructed: the employees burned their archives, changed their names, and went their separate ways. Podbelsky became a traveling hypnotist, then opened a boarding school — with the sole purpose of finding children capable of "crossing the line" and creating his own First Squad. Because, according to him, the war will soon begin again.

Klaus Jaeger and the Old Woman

In Munich, eighty-one-year-old Klaus Jäger, president of Ritter Jagd, is also watching the anime "First Squad" for the fifth time. Ritter Jagd officially specializes in "knight" meal replacement capsules, but its biotechnology division is developing far more serious research: "Jäger Jugend," an anti-aging drug that causes test subjects to either die or degenerate, and "Ritter Antworth" (Project RA), a volatile substance that causes overwhelming euphoria and, at sufficient concentration, kills a person within minutes.

The Old Woman, a blind woman named Greta who went by a different name in her youth, comes to Yeager. She sees images of a "hollow earth" covered in ice in the anime — the same images that haunt Nika. Greta says that if there’s a message, there’s a sender, and advises him to contact a certain Werewolf.

Erwin and the trainer

The new trainer at the Sevastopol dolphinarium turns out to be Erwin, a young German with ash-blond curls and the alias "Yemand Fremd" ("Someone Unknown"). Nika exposes his false identities one by one until he finally reveals his real one. Erwin is an agent connected to Jäger’s organization; his brother is trying to remove him from the job, accusing him of "losing his mind" under the influence of "enemy agent N" — that is, Nika herself. Amigo, through a telepathic session, helps Erwin and Nika enter the Other Side — the dolphin acts as a guide, perceiving the Werewolf as its trainer.

Yeager’s wife and the death of Galochka

Greta Jäger reveals herself to be a former Ahnenerbe comrade who lived sixty-four years in silence and fear after changing her name and betraying the innocent — she was one of the Rauch twin sisters who participated in the execution of the Pioneers. Now the old woman decides to tell the truth: she calls Nika and informs her that the "happiness virus" — "Ritter Antworth" — is already being used. The children of the "Nadezhda" boarding school died from it: death occurs in a state of irresistible euphoria that cannot be interrupted.

The same fate befalls Nika’s family in Murmansk, where she manages to arrive. In the apartment, Nika finds her mother, father, stepmother Zinaida Ivanovna, and sisters in a state of blissful paralysis — the "Days of Germany" in Murmansk were a cover for the release of the substance. Nika manages to open the windows and drag the living out into the street, but her sister, Galochka, dies. An Orthodox priest and a local noid (shaman), Danilov, gather over the body with a tambourine — each performing their own rite for the soul of the dead woman.

Father Alexander and the final lap

The priest, Father Alexander, turns out to be Nika’s longtime contact, who had been waiting for her. He takes her to his place at 4 Sovetskaya Street. Nika must do what Podbelsky has been training his "dolls" for years: enter the black circle on the ice — the very one she saw in her dreams — and fulfill the conditions under which the dead pioneers of the First Squad will be able to side with the living in the looming war. The book ends as Nika faces this choice — the ending is left open, as is the question of whose truth will prevail: the truth of the dead, the truth of the living, or the truth hidden on the other side of the seabed.